Driving through Hadley, thinking of UMass Basketball
I understand that the UMass basketball team is having a good season this year. When I first visited UMass, it was the spring of 1996, and I remember barns in Hadley had messages scrawled on them supporting the basketball team during their Final Four run. "We love you, Marcus Camby" and "Go UMass." I moved to Amherst in the fall and I remember thinking UMass was a basketball school. They had a brand new arena, and everybody was expecting the team to be a perennial power. Over the next few years, the team slid back to reality and everybody realized that the Marcus Camby years were an aberration, not the norm.
I was reflecting on this yesterday, because Ron Chimelis, the author of the post I linked to above, visited my sportswriting class at WNEU. Chimelis is a sports writer for The Republican newspaper. It was great. I think the students were really jazzed to talk sports -- and even writing -- with a guy who had been there. He talked about walking out of Yankee Stadium in 2003 after the Red Sox's season-ending loss in the 11th inning of Game 7 in the ALCS and thinking he would never realize his dream of covering the World Series. He talked about getting a phone call out of the blue a year or two ago from Camby, the former UMass basketball star. He was eating breakfast, and his cell phone rang, and the voice on the phone said, "Here's a blast from your past." And I thought Chimelis had a very humane viewpoint, talking about always having respect for what athletes are able to do, and saying he had never written a column calling for a coach to be fired. It's the guy's livelihood, after all.
My carpool buddy Dan and I were driving back to Greenfield yesterday through Hadley, because he wanted to stop at a Latin food market (primarily Ecuadoran) on the way home. So I was talking to him about watching Lari Ketner pump fake his way into the sunset (at least in the metaphorical sense of UMass's decline from basketball greatness). Wow, that was a long time ago. I remember the first UMass Basketball game I attended. Actually, I don't remember the game much. What I remember was getting called down to the court for the half time contest and sinking a layup, a free throw, and a three pointer, to win a nice bevy of prizes (a night at a Boston hotel, dinner at Applebee's and a gift certificate to the Big Y supermarkets). That was nice.
I was reflecting on this yesterday, because Ron Chimelis, the author of the post I linked to above, visited my sportswriting class at WNEU. Chimelis is a sports writer for The Republican newspaper. It was great. I think the students were really jazzed to talk sports -- and even writing -- with a guy who had been there. He talked about walking out of Yankee Stadium in 2003 after the Red Sox's season-ending loss in the 11th inning of Game 7 in the ALCS and thinking he would never realize his dream of covering the World Series. He talked about getting a phone call out of the blue a year or two ago from Camby, the former UMass basketball star. He was eating breakfast, and his cell phone rang, and the voice on the phone said, "Here's a blast from your past." And I thought Chimelis had a very humane viewpoint, talking about always having respect for what athletes are able to do, and saying he had never written a column calling for a coach to be fired. It's the guy's livelihood, after all.
My carpool buddy Dan and I were driving back to Greenfield yesterday through Hadley, because he wanted to stop at a Latin food market (primarily Ecuadoran) on the way home. So I was talking to him about watching Lari Ketner pump fake his way into the sunset (at least in the metaphorical sense of UMass's decline from basketball greatness). Wow, that was a long time ago. I remember the first UMass Basketball game I attended. Actually, I don't remember the game much. What I remember was getting called down to the court for the half time contest and sinking a layup, a free throw, and a three pointer, to win a nice bevy of prizes (a night at a Boston hotel, dinner at Applebee's and a gift certificate to the Big Y supermarkets). That was nice.